Day 161: The Liturgy of the Hours (2026)
episode
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
18 min
1 speaker
3 chapters
transcribed 2 months ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the Liturgy of the Hours and which paragraphs are we reading today?
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 161. We are reading paragraphs 1174 to 1178. As always, I'm sure you know this. I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a Foundations of Faith approach But you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
You can also download your own catechism and your reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash CIY. And you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. That way it comes right to your... app. I was going to say to your inbox. I don't think it goes to your inbox. I think it just pops up and says, hey, listen to me today. And here we are listening today, day 161. We're reading paragraphs 1174 to 1178. This is on the liturgy of the hours. Now, obviously, we're deep into the idea of the liturgy. Yesterday, we talked about the liturgical year. We talked about that strange word, the Sanctorum, which is ultimately not strange. It's just indicates the feast days of our lady or of other saints.
But today we're talking about the liturgy of the hours, also known as the divine office. You might have seen like, you know, the priest walking around with this book. That's not exactly a Bible. It has the word of God in it, but it's not a Bible. You might call it the breviary, B-R-E-V-I-A-R-Y, breviary. Your deacon might pray the breviary. You might have a friend. Maybe even you pray the breviary. That's the Liturgy of the Hours. Now, we're going to talk about the importance of the Liturgy of the Hours, of the divine office. But I just want to give some context. So the Liturgy of the Hours is prayed roughly five times a day, or maybe exactly five times a day. Priests, deacons, bishops, a lot of religious sisters and brothers.
There might even be some lay people who make a commitment. In fact, when I was ordained a deacon, I made a promise to pray all five hours a day. We call them hours, but they're moments really. And these five hours of the day are the office of readings. So that's extended praying the Psalms and extended reading from scripture, as well as a reflection by the church or by someone who's notable. That's called the office of readings. Then you have morning prayer, daytime prayer, evening prayer, and night prayer. So that adds up to five different times a day where we stop and we have to pray. Not have to, well, yes, have to and get to. We're obligated to and we get to. In fact, okay, so that's the nuts and bolts.
That's what it is, those five hours of the day. The importance of this, and I'm going to highlight this before we read this reading because it's very important. The importance of this is this is actually technically known as the prayer of the church in paragraph 1175. It says that the liturgy of the hours is intended to become the prayer of the whole people of God. And so you might think, wait, wait, wait, wait, I've never even heard of this. Or maybe I've never even been encouraged by my priest, by my parish, by any teachers to pray the liturgy of the hours. And yet this prayer is meant to be the prayer of the whole people of God. It is the prayer of the church. And so as we launch into these five paragraphs today, we know what they are.
They're at the office of readings, morning prayer, daytime prayer, evening prayer, and night prayer. They're meant to sanctify the entire day and they're God's gift through the church to you. They're God's gift through the church to me. And so to be able to recognize this is not an extra obligation placed on anybody, but the church here is highlighting their importance.
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